Apparently Pepsi Max and Doritos have a contest going on for people to make their own ads. However, this one should have been rejected. Furthermore, Catholics should be just as offended by the ad even if it appears Protestant. Pepsi and Doritos is a mockery of the Body and Blood of Christ and what the Protestants call the Lord’s Supper. Either way, the Scripture is being mocked.

It’s obviously a Protestant church, the one guy called the other guy “pastor” and the “communion lines” had little shot glasses, not one big cup. Also, it is ironic that this has been filmed, as I have read (I never saw it with my own eyes) that some priests in the sixties and seventies tried to consecrate pizza and beer and chips and soda.

All in all, this doesn’t shock me. The media is blatantly Anti-Catholic and Anti-Christian so mockery of church rituals is the name of the game if the a people think it’s clever. Does anyone really think that these ads help sell the products?

When I was a student I worked as a massage therapist. I was called to give a massage to a couple of TV producers/writers in one of the rooms at a large hotel in St. Louis. The one lady said, during the massage (she only wanted her feet taken care of, which I found odd) that she was writing a movie and one of the characters had a Pope doll that when you pushed a button the doll would utter curse words. I told her that as a Catholic I would find that very offensive. She said that other Catholics she asked thought it was funny. I replied that I didn’t know whether or not the people she asked were faithful Catholics but as someone who takes his Faith seriously, such a scene would offend me.

The media has been and will continue to be Anti-Catholic and Anti-Christian.

Shockingly bad taste (the commercial, not the food; I like Doritos). Treating Christianity with such philistine flippancy reflects a remarkable superficiality and lack of sensitivity – as well as lack of common sense, as this will (or at least ought to) incense any serious believer who sees it. Hardly a good tactic for an advertising campaign. Although, of course, it will appeal to some of the viewing audience, who have been progressively desensitized to this kind of material that trivializes things that are sacred.

PepsiCo contacted. I will not buy another Pepsi or Frito-Lay product until they assure us that what is holiest to millions of real Catholics will not be mocked by them. And maybe not even after they “assure” us. What a shameful piece of work.

I haven’t had TV in my house since everything went digital.
But I would definitely be offended by an ad like this.
Why are Christians in general and Catholics in particular always made a punching bag by the media?
Dr. Eric-what a horrid idea that woman had for a movie! I’m glad that you ‘told her off’! Way to go!

Pepsi and the entire company was one and still is one of the original and biggest supporters of Planned Parenthood. Why anyone who is pro-life would buy the products from Pepsico is beyond me. The ad, regardless of denomination, is blasphemous, as it makes fun of Christ at the Last Supper, even if the Protestants think it is just a memory.

I guess these companies are going for shock value, or something, to draw attention to themselves and their products.

There is another recent commercial, I’m not sure what the product is, but it has to do with people rushing off from their job or whatever, to get together to watch football at a local establishment. One of those depicted is a Catholic Priest checking the time and realizing he is running late. It shows a Catholic Priest, in his Mass attire at the altar, hurredly blowing out the candles on the altar and dashing out the door in his black cassock with cape. He hops in his classic car and off he goes to join the gang at whatever the place was. I have a feeling it had to do with football and a few brewskies. Don’t know the brand.

But, this one was Catholic in appearance, for sure. I don’t care for the imagery these companies are using to hawk their wares. Nope.

Now my tv watching has been cut dramatically since I’ve entered religious life…this is disrespectful at minimal and blasphemous at max. Boycotting companies is a difficult thing, most companies patronize abortion in some type of way unfortunately. I do my best to support small businesses when possible.

Comcast is in on it as well. In November they ran a commercial with the Dies Irae from Mozart’s famous Requiem providing a soundtrack for a theft with an assault or possible murder. Last week they started running an ad using the first six words of the same Requiem’s Sanctus.

Come on folks, lighten up. It’s just a humorous commercial, not some diabolical attack on the Sacrament. Given that the Christian faith is so seldom seen practiced in television shows (you don’t see many TV characters going to church) it is a little refreshing to see that a commercial, the humor of which assumes that the audience has at least some knowledge of Communion (whether Catholic or Protestant), could get made and be shown. It’s an advertsing idea that could easily have been rejected on the grounds that it is insensitive or incomprehensible to non-Christians.

I called the main Pepsico (parent company of both Doritos and Pepsi) and talked to a nice older lady that actually agreed that the commercial was in bad taste and started to tell me it was not Pepsico, but I politely interrupted her saying, “I’m sorry but YOUR COMPANY is benefiting from this advertising…”

I have contacted our investment professional and he is researching on whether any of our three mutual funds accounts have holdings in Pepsico, I have told him, that we wanted to make sure we have no stock in Pepsico.

I won’t dump in the trash or down the drain, any Pepsico products we have in the house, but as sure as heck, I am not buying more.

I find the NFL commercial as an overall positive representation of the Church. The church is clearly empty as he rushes through putting everything away. I don’t think there was any attempt to depict him rushing off in the middle of Mass; rather they showed him quickly finishing putting everything away and blowing out the candles after some type of weeknight service (the ad is for Thursday night football). This fits with the rest of the people depicted in the ad, who were all shown closing up or punching out or whatnot at the end of the day.

The priest is depicted wearing a cassock and cape – which would be a very traditional priest. Additionally, in the commercial he was chosen as the representative of Saints fans (the ads in this series all depict people who are representative of the local teams rushing off to watch the game). If anything, if anything the ad depicts the Church in a positive way as an important pillar of the New Orleans community. The priest himself is depicted as both traditional and connected to parishioners who welcome him to watch the game. Yes, I would have liked him to be depicted a little more reverently at the start of the ad, but this commercial is nothing like the Pepsi/Doritos one which explicitly mocks communion no-matter which Church or Christian community one belongs to.

Lutherans, generally. Makes sense, as Anglicans and Lutherans are very close to the (one most true) Church on the tree, as it were. There’s also a couple collar styles that are “Anglican” in particular — like when you see white all the way around. An Anglican deacon I know told me it’s kinda a matter of personal choice; he chooses to wear a Roman-style collar because he closer to Rome than Canterbury. For what it’s worth.

Gregg, Golatin and JohnMa, thank you for cluing me in on the commercial. It is not horrible, but I find it kind of makes light of the Priesthood and the Catholic Church. (Super Bowl Mass? Say it’s not so, please.)

There’s some irony here though: the spirit of Vatican II has already enlightened and inspired so many expert liturgists to do the same thing with pizza and beer and the like in order to make the liturgy more relevant. It took Pepsico, however, to make light of the subject and – if indeed they meant for this to entail some humor – how silly such ideas are. Liturgists who were inspired with such ideas would have scoffed at the notion that they were desacralizing the liturgy, yet the humor in the commercial entails the point that that is indeed what is taking place. The average brain-dead couch potato who snickers at the juxtaposition of Pepsi and Doritos with the liturgy is more tuned in to reality than the expert liturgists ever were.

I saw the ad for Thursday Night Football, and I didn’t see it as a good representation of a priest. He was rushing away from the Church–without any show of reverence–for a football game. That he is dressed traditionally just shows that when anyone in the culture wants to identify someone as a Catholic, they use traditional garb. Catholics should be more attentive to that fact.

I saw an ad for Audi that ended with a tag line that went something like this–“It’s the season of Audi Event. ” Did anyone else see that?

Pepsi & Doritos are in the same conglomerate – so they kind of leverage certain economies of scope. This awful commercial seems to be riding on the prevailing anti-Catholicism that’s been formenting since Obama took office. And if that is indeed true then it is a disturbing commentary to our days.

I have an astounding video about an accurate prediction, prophecy, on how this persecution will happen or is coming about in my FB acct. I’ll post it at my blog when I get home. (If you have a FB acct, feel free to friend me and get all these. I go by Ricky Vines. )

If the big cheering session happened right after Mass, as a procession out of church, there’s plenty of precedent for that. (Although maintaining solemnity inside church and then cheering when everybody gets outside would be better.) If not, that’s not so good.

The commercial was not produced by Pepsico or any of its agencies. Per their reply to my complaint:
“We want to reassure you that the commercial you cited is not one designed and produced by PepsiCo, but a consumer submission in our web-based Crash the Super Bowl promotion. In this program, participants can upload their own 30-second spots for Doritos tortilla chips or Pepsi MAX to be considered for broadcast during Super Bowl XLV. The finalists will not be announced until January 2011.

We apologize if you were upset or offended by this consumer submission, and we will share your feedback with our marketing teams so they can be aware of your concerns.”

Thank you for contacting us at PepsiCo to share your sincere thoughts.

We want to reassure you that the commercial you cited is not one designed and produced by PepsiCo, but a consumer submission in our web-based Crash the Super Bowl promotion. In this program, participants can upload their own 30-second spots for Doritos tortilla chips or Pepsi MAX to be considered for broadcast during Super Bowl XLV. The finalists will not be announced until January 2011.

We apologize if you were upset or offended by this consumer submission, and we will share your feedback with our marketing teams so they can be aware of your concerns.

Thanks again for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,

Margaret Corsi
Consumer Relations Representative

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Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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